NIH Accountants Volunteer at Food Bank

NIH volunteers pose at Manna Food Center.

Volunteering at Manna Food Center were (from l) Manuel Garcia, Marie Novak, Dan Milstead, Ray Hart, Alan Lichtman, Hruta Virkar, Angel Wang, Diana Huang and Kyle Kronenberger.

Nine accountants from NIH’s Division of Financial Advisory Services (DFAS) volunteered Saturday, Jan. 30 to help sort donated canned foods at Manna’s Gaithersburg food distribution center. Manna describes itself as “the premier food bank of Montgomery County, providing food to 40,000 individuals each year and helping distribute rescued food to soup kitchens, food pantries and emergency shelters.”

It was the first weekend community service project for the group, most of them CPAs, whose day job is to negotiate indirect cost rates with companies receiving grants and contracts from NIH.

Nearly half of the department volunteered. Their assignment was to sort recently volunteered foodstuffs into one of 24 different bins of food being readied for distribution. They also had to check the dates on the products to ensure the donations were still usable. The project was organized by Angel Wang, one of the department’s newest hires.